Man stands under tornado

Walking through the yard of her childhood home, Deb Aalfs has a lot of reminders of how close the EF-1 tornado really came her father’s house, just outside near Reinbeck.

“That’s gone,” she said pointing at a blown-out window. “It knocked [those trees] right over.”

“Well, it was quite an event,” said Wally Stensland. “Could have been worse.”

That’s a bit of an understatement. Stensland was standing on his front porch, when he looked up, and saw the tornado coming down, right on top of him.

“When that gust of air came up and I saw that darn thing, I knew it was time to get out of there,” he said.

Stensland ran to his basement, and survived with relatively minor damage to his home, but his neighbors across the street weren't so lucky. Surveyors from the National Weather Service told KWWL that they believe the tornado touched down right on top of Stensland’s home, then traveled 3.1 miles, leaving little behind it but destruction.

Just across from Stensland, a neighbor’s roof was ripped clean off. But after the tornado hit, silence.

“Within two or three seconds, it was over,” Stensland said. And buried in the wreckage, a silver lining — no one was hurt.